Dear Diary: March 2009

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Where The Wild Things Are!

Trailer for Spike Jonze's flick due out in October. Arcade Fire provides the perfect song for it, too.

Friday, March 27, 2009

This clip isn't as interesting as I hoped it would be when my sister emailed it to me. But it does remind me of two interesting anecdotes that her little buddy, Isaac, brought back with him from his time spent in the Congo doing primate research.

The guy from this clip, who worked with Isaac during his time in Africa, actually burned a poachers' camp to the ground, and subsequently received death threats via etchings carved into trees by a machete. There's more to this story. I'm hoping my sister will be kind enough to fill me in. Again.

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Her little buddy, Isaac, has this way about him that attracts the friendships of foreign peoples. As in, if you took 100 Americans at random and put them in a foreign country and assigned them to work alongside natives of that country, they'd probably like Isaac the most. It's partly his sense of humor, partly his general demeanor, and partly something intangible. I noticed this when Moose and I visited my sister in Costa Rica and met him. Am I gay for Isaac? No. But I can see why you might think so. Hopefully I'll be able to mix some demeaning characterizations into this story to offset this glowing prologue.

His time in The Congo was apparently no different from his time in Costa Rica in this regard. Given an even more daunting language barrier, however, I can only believe the relationships forged with the Congolese dudes in the camp weren't quite what they were with the Costa Ricans in Guanacaste, as Isaac spoke Spanish pretty well. Whether these guys spoke Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili or French, it was all new to him. Just the same, the Congolese men in the camp trusted him enough to eat crocodile, which they were not supposed to do, in his presence. On at least one occasion, left alone in the camp, they shared some of the spoils with him. Huddled around a barbecue, they laughed and ate crocodile meat. Suddenly, they heard chants coming from the jungle. Isaac recognized the song as one that usually preceded or accompanied armed civil conflicts. Moments after they all turned their gaze and attention towards the approaching song, the men all drew machetes from their belts and sprinted into the jungle, fists clenched and screaming. Isaac, left alone in the camp, stood up slowly, then froze. Mouth agape, he pushed the remaining crocodile meat in his mouth out with his tongue. Was he about to die in Africa? Warm, brownish urine running down his leg, he stood still and waited for his fate.

No sooner had he finished emptying his bladder, his mind wiped as clean as a newborn baby by the little known "do absolutely nothing but pee in your pants" part of the fight-or-flight response, than his compatriots reemerged from the jungle, laughing hysterically. The joke was on Isaac. As they approached and realized he'd wet his pants, their knees gave way and they fell to the ground clutching their bellies which ached from frenzied, prolonged laughter.

Isaac didn't have any clean underwear to change into.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Splish Splash

Moose used to work with this guy. This guy was a corporate attorney who left his corporation to campaign for Obama. While doing god's work, John wore many hats. On election day, however, his role was pretty straightforward: Go into a downtrodden project in a Boston neighborhood and remind people that it was election day. This project wasn't as straightforward as it seemed, unfortunately.

John began on the top floor intent on working his way down and out (no pun intended) of the building. After a couple forgettable moments that followed his knock on the door, it opened. A black man in his mid to late twenties unassumingly stepped back and to the side as though he was expecting someone. Just as a cloud of cigar smoke hit John's nose, his eyes darted across the room into its open space. There below a cloud of swirling smoke, several men in their mid to late twenties gathered in a circle, each of them seated on a couch and chairs and smoking his own cigar. At center there was an elderly white man, presumably entirely nude, though only visible from the torso up, sitting in a wash basin.

All of them turned their attention to the stranger standing in the doorway. Dumbfounded, John wondered if he was dreaming. What could possibly explain this?

"Vote for Obama," he managed before turning towards the stairwell and never turning back.